Asphodel
by Unsuspected
Summary: Nico has been visiting the Underworld again, and he can't help but wonder about the mysterious, mad-looking woman perched on the twisting branch of a poplar tree.


There's a woman in the Fields of Asphodel who fascinates him. She sits forever on the twisted branch of a black poplar tree, rooted as close as it can be to the Fields of Punishment; he isn't sure that she has ever moved from her perch, and is fairly certain she never will. Yet there is something about her that makes him wonder about the woman. Like all wanderers of Asphodel, her mood seems to be stuck forever in a state of hopeless longing. But hers is different somehow. He can't quite put a name on it, but it isn't the same rueful emotion as the others wear. She isn't missing _life_, he thinks, she's missing someone.

And Nico di Angelo wants to know who it is. He wants to know everything about this woman. He can't explain it, not at all, but the mystery surrounding her makes him all the more curious.

So once a week, he'll enter the land of the dead. He'll walk right to the poplar tree, ignoring the hundreds of chattering spirits following him. He'll stop about twenty feet away from her, and sit down beside another old poplar. He doesn't want to disturb her, not yet, at least. He is simply curious.

And after three trips, her face is as clear as it would be if she were another living person. Even he, a child of _Hades_, could not clearly make out the woman's appearance at first glance. And now that he sees her clearly, there is more he wants to know.

Perhaps, once upon a time, the woman was beautiful. Now, however, the beauty had been stamped out, replaced by nothing short of madness. Dark, demented eyes peer out from a horribly tangled heap of hair, shining with something the other souls seem to lack. It isn't _life_necessarily, but perhaps a determination to be more than the others are, even in death. They're hungry, searching everywhere, though she never does leave her seat on the poplar. One place they linger on far longer than the others is the Fields of Punishment. She stares past everything else, right past the Judgment Pavilion, right past Cerberus, at those awful punishments. Nico still doesn't understand her interest with the horrid place. And more than _any_ of the woman's many mysteries, he wants to solve why.

And he's determined to do so.

Too scared to ask his father, too embarrassed to ask Bianca, he seeks help from the other spirits of the Asphodel Fields.

"Who's that?" he asks one of the many spirits that have crowded around him.

The spirit shakes his head. "I do not know sir," he says.

Another pipes, "Nor do I sir."

It seems every one of the spirits surrounding him echo this.

"No one knows?" he shouted angrily. "Someone must!"

But no one does. And so he sacrifices his pride, and walks to the Judgment Pavilion on his next trip.

Today, William Shakespeare, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln are on duty. Nico must have caught them at the five-minute break between cases, because they are alone.

"Hello."

The three judges return the greeting in a hollow unison.

"Who is that woman? The one sitting on the tree in Asphodel, looking toward the Fields of Punishment?" asks Nico.

He does not need to clarify. Instead, all three judges nod their heads solemnly, and one (Abraham Lincoln) replies in an empty sort of voice, "Bellatrix Lestrange. I had her case. Pureblood witch. Considered for the Fields of Punishment. By many, considered to be one of the most horrible servants of the Dark Lord. I voted for her to be sent directly to the Fields of Punishment."

"I, however, believed the Fields of Asphodel to be more suited for her," drones Shakespeare.

"Asphodel," Washington adds.

Nico, however, processed little after Lincoln's final fact on the woman. Almost nothing of this made sense to him. Pureblood witch? Is that a way of saying someone was especially rude? It can't be, though, can it? The judges are meant to be entirely impartial. Dark Lord? They surely can't have meant his father... But instead of asking, he tests the name on his lips. "Bellatrix Lestrange." After taking a moment to absorb its vibrations fully, Nico allows his curiosity to absorb him once more. Struggling to keep his tone respectful (he was quite sure he would get no questions answered if he failed to do so), he fires off his one million and two questions. He repeats exactly what he has been thinking, not taking a breath at all.

The judges sigh.

"By pureblood witch, I meant that she was a woman of magical heritage, who had inherited the same gift with magic," Lincoln explains. His voice sounds rather bored.

"The Dark Lord is referred to by many names. Some popular names include You-Know-Who—"

"I _don't_."

Abraham Lincoln clears his throat loudly in protest of the interruption. However, his speech continues so smoothly afterward, one would think there had been no interruption at all. "—He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and most recently Voldemort and, well… Voldy."

Nico can't help himself, he snorts at the absurdity of the name. He receives three harsh stares in return. Trying to cover up the incident as soon as he can, he moves quickly to his next question. "Why was there a disagreement in the location she ought to have been sent to?"

"She was quite the case, Ms. Bellatrix Lestrange. Her relatives were easy, one extreme to the next, those Blacks. But she..."

Nico nods enthusiastically, hair wildly flying about. He does his best to keep an uninterested face while simultaneously convincing the judges to elaborate.

But they don't need the boy's encouragement. Always the storyteller, Shakespeare seems eager to hear another's adaptation of a tale. He too nods with enthusiasm, though managing to look infinitely more dignified than Nico does while doing so.

The others agree to go on.

Bellatrix Lestrange has killed and tortured many, torn apart families, destroyed dreams. But all along she has been loyal. Not once—not while slowly losing herself in a horrid prison called Azkaban, not while facing death, not while being tortured by the one she so respects, _never_—has her loyalty wavered. A thousand horrible, undoable deeds done by the woman are described in gruesome detail, just as she herself had proudly declared. All for the master she craved to please, thirst for approval never quite quenched.

The judges spare him no details, going into everything they know about the woman. And when at last they finish, Nico thanks them politely, and heads to the tree where the woman still sits, more of an enigma than ever.

He still chooses not to speak to her, though he does go only fifteen feet from her instead of his usual twenty. It isn't much, but it's enough for her to right hand to reach to the pocket of her black robes. It twitches inside the pocket for a moment out of what Nico assumes is umbrage before it is drawn out again, resting finally of the branch beside her.

Muttering something about the "filthy Muggles" in charge of this place, she turns her dark eyes back toward the terrible land called the Fields of Punishment.

And after seven more weeks of wordlessly returning, he stops his weekly visits abruptly. But with the change in habit is a promise made to himself. When he dies, he will find his way back somehow to that same poplar tree, back to the woman. And then he would talk to her, and find out the answers he so desperately wanted to know.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Many thanks to my wonderful beta, wisegirlweasley.<br>So, my first crossover. No one's ever put these characters in a story together (as important characters, that it; there's probably one somewhere), as far as I know. I found that a bit odd, as one of them's dead, and the other can communicate with the dead. Anyway, still on the subject of crossovers: I really wanted to do one, and that whole Nico di Angelo, son of Hades discovers he's a wizard and goes to Hogwarts is not only _highly_ unlikely in the PJO/Potter worlds (yes, some rules are bent in nearly all crossovers, but I prefer mostly to go as much by canon as possible), but also in great quantities. So this just kind of appeared in my head. I actually had a version of this where one of the spirits knew her, but it required too much of a boring and lengthy backstory, and it was scrapped. In that same version, before I decided against it, Nico actually talked with Bellatrix, but I decided against it because it was borderline OOC for her to even spare to words on a filthy Muggle such as Nico. Anyway, when I'm done rereading the Harry Potter books in preparation for the next movie, I'll probably post another crossover featuring Albus Potter and his lack of Apparation skills. To end this terribly long author's note, I thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed.**


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